NKorea's food crisis bringing starvation: aid group

Thu May 1, 1:11 AM ET

SEOUL (AFP) - North Korea's food crisis has already seen some people starve to death amid fears of another famine, according to an aid group which works in the impoverished communist nation.

People in remote rural towns in the province of South Pyongan are dying of starvation, South Korea's Good Friends organisation said in a newsletter late Wednesday.

It said local government officials fear hunger may cause massive deaths by starvation in the province and elsewhere unless the government takes urgent action and resumes suspended food rations.

This year suicides and crimes driven by hunger have increased sharply across the country, the group said.

"Many people will die of hunger in a month if the government fails to check soaring rice prices," Han Kyong-Dok, a 56-year-old farmer in Yangdok, 90 kilemetres (54 miles) east of Pyongyang, was quoted by Good Friends as saying.

Prices of staple foods have almost tripled over the past year despite a clampdown to stop the rapid rise.

Prices stabilised in mid-April, but began soaring again from April 25, triggering concerns that a 1990s-style famine could break out, Good Friends said.

The hardline communist state again runs the risk of famine, ten years after up to one million of its people died of starvation, the US-based Peterson Institute said Wednesday.

The United Nations World Food Programme (WFP) has warned that time is running out to avert a humanitarian tragedy due to acute and worsening food shortages.

The WFP estimates that right now more than 6.5 million people, out of a population of 23 million, do not have enough to eat, warning that the figure would rise unless urgent action is taken.

Thirty-seven percent of young children are already chronically malnourished and one-third of mothers are malnourished and anaemic, it said.

The North has relied on international aid to help feed its people, but in 2006 ordered the WFP drastically to reduce its programme following two good harvests.

North Korea now relies on emergency aid from China, but Beijing is lukewarm to Pyongyang's request for massive food shipments, Good Friends said.

South Korea in recent years has also provided around 400,000 tonnes of rice and 300,000 tonnes of fertiliser annually in bilateral aid.

But Pyongyang has so far not asked Seoul for aid amid rising cross-border tensions. It is angry at the new Seoul government's policy of linking economic assistance -- but not humanitarian aid -- to denuclearisation.